Sponsored Listing

Monday, 28 November 2011

To understand the Republican Presidential race, grasp first that the party is one of ideas. One is born into the Democratic Party. If you are black or Latino or poor or gay or become a single mother, your partisan identity is often spoken for. But you become a member of the Republican Party by agreeing with certain ideas.

So there are several distinct groupings within the Republican Party merged together by shared ideals but with sharply different priorities and perspectives. Imagine that each sector of the party is like a division in the NFL or in Major League Baseball, with its own separate playoffs or pennant race and its own separate champion. Then, the winners of the divisions meet in the primaries. We are still in the pre-runoff phase....

.... “So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations,”

Mr. Obama said, according to a transcript on the Huffington Post Web site, which on Friday published the comments. The remarks touched off a torrent of criticism ... accusing Mr. Obama of elitism and belittling the working class.

Mr. Obama forcefully rejected those charges when he arrived at a rally here [Terre Haute, IN] on Friday evening, drawing a standing ovation in a crowded gymnasium when he painted both of his rivals as entrenched Washington insiders.

“No, I’m in touch,” Mr. Obama said. “I know exactly what’s going on. I know what’s going on in Pennsylvania, I know what’s going on in Indiana, I know what’s going on in Illinois. People are fed up, they’re angry, they’re frustrated, they’re bitter and they want to see a change in Washington. That’s why I’m running for president of the United States of America.”

“I already said that if he wants to use a teleprompter, that would be fine with me. It has to be fair.

If you had to defend ObamaCare, wouldn’t you want a teleprompter?” Gingrich asked.

“Now, just for a second I’m going on a detour and explain why I think he’ll say yes. There are two reasons. The first is ego. Can you imagine him looking in the mirror? Graduate from Columbia, Harvard Law, editor of the Law Review journal,

Greatest Articulator in the Democratic Party."

“How is he going to say that he’s afraid to be on the same podium as a West Georgia College teacher?”

.... Emboldened further by “that sort of anarchy cred” which the civil disobedience/“hacktivism” group Anonymous had been demonstrating in recent times, Lasn and his Adbusters associates held brainstorming sessions on how they themselves might effect “some kind of a soft regime change” to diminish the political influence of “finances,” “lobbyists,” and “corporations.”

In an effort to “catalyze” a protest movement against those forces, Lasn and Adbusters “put feelers out on our [Internet] forums” suggesting a mass demonstration in the hub of New York City's financial district. Thus was born the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement, whose first public rally was held on September 17, 2011.

After some OWS demonstrators subsequently became involved in conflicts with police officers, Lasn said that “police brutality actually helps the movement” by drawing media attention.

While Lasn concedes that every popular movement faces the “danger” that its idealistic leaders may eventually “turn into monsters,” he nonetheless believes “it’s very important for us to win, and [to] worry about how badly we behave later — right now we need to pull the current monster down.”

Kalle Lasn, the editor and co-founder of Adbusters magazine, says "one of the most powerful things of all is aesthetics."

The Corporate American Flag, created by Kalle Lasn's Adbusters

.... The attention brought by the Occupy protests has revived questions about [Kalle Lasn's] views on Jews and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In 2004, Adbusters published an article claiming that a large percentage of neoconservatives behind American foreign policy were Jewish(*).

As a result, Mr. Lasn was called anti-Semitic, a charge he denies. He remains incensed that the incident was mentioned in a recent column by David Brooks, a New York Times columnist, and he has been involved in a discussion with the paper’s letters page about how he can address it.

“There’s not an anti-Semitic bone in my body,” he said, adding, “If we’re going to start wars based on the power of neocons’ influence in foreign policy, I think people should know who they are.”

He has also been accused of playing off the image-oriented culture that dominates advertising, instead of rejecting it outright. But Mr. Lasn said he believed in the power of media to subvert traditional power structures.

“If you’re able to come up with a very sexy sounding hash tag like we did for Occupy Wall Street, and you come up with a very magical looking poster that seems to have something very profound about it, these devices push these memes, these meta memes, into the public imagination in a very powerful way,” he said.

.... The people’s assemblies will continue with or without winter encampments. What will be new is the marked escalation of surprise, playful, precision disruptions — rush-hour flash mobs, bank occupations, “occupy squads” and edgy theatrics. And we will see clearly articulated demands emerging, among them a “Robin Hood tax” on all financial transactions and currency trades; a ban on high-frequency “flash” trading; the reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act to again separate investment banking from commercial banking; a constitutional amendment to revoke corporate personhood and overrule Citizens United; a move toward a “true cost” market regime in which the price of every product reflects the ecological cost of its production, distribution and use; and with a bit of luck, perhaps even the birth of a new, left-right hybrid political party that moves America beyond the Coke vs. Pepsi choices of the past.

In this visceral, canny, militantly nonviolent phase of our march to real democracy, we will “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.” We will regroup, lick our wounds, brainstorm and network all winter. We will build momentum for a full-spectrum counterattack when the crocuses bloom next spring.

BUTButbut...

... in the Times today, Lasn "insists they have no interest in a continuing leadership role, nor is it their job to speak for the movement..."

Far be it for me to accuse radical antisemitic leftists, who want to effect "soft regime change," of being inconsistent in their public statements. According to Lasn, we will worry about any "bad behavior".... later.

.... We are all under the underlying tension of the Iranian threat – will there be a war or not? What's more, it looks like Israel, as usual, has only Hashem to depend on. At any rate, that's the good news. Kislev is a great month for the Jewish people. Why? The light of Chanuka awaits us.

One candle is enough to illuminate the pitch-black darkness. King Solomon compared the candle to the human soul. Thus, the Chanuka candles can teach us a lot about our inner selves.

Despair and depression are darkness. Judaism - particularly the Chanuka holiday - teaches that there is no room for despair and depression in the Jewish lexicon, no matter who threatens us with atomic weapons or with anything else. There's always hope. The Gemara teaches that even if a sharp knife is resting on your throat, don't despair - trust in Hashem's magnificent and merciful lovingkindness.

The Yetzer Hora, or Evil Inclination, wants us to lose hope. He doesn't want you to believe that redemption can be right now, at any minute, and that Moshiach is right around the corner. By convincing you that the Jewish notion of eagerly anticipating the Geula [redemption] is false and ridiculous, he eventually convinces you that all of Torah is false and ridiculous, G-d forbid....

.... The light of a Chanuka candle - which the holy Ariza’l says is symbolic of emuna, or faith - carries a person above the clutches of nature. Torah, Teshuva, and prayer do the same. A soldier can be pinned down, with no logical way out; yet, Hashem has solutions. Never despair, or the ballgame's over. Put your gin and tonic down, and pick up a Book of Psalms. Let the light of King David's eternal and universal words light up your soul.

Many of us are scarred from life in this cold and empty world, where few care about nothing other than a greenback or their next cheap thrill. Yet, if a wounded soldier stops shooting, he's finished; if he transfers his rifle from his wounded right arm to his healthy left arm, he can continue fighting and ultimately triumph....

.... Our sages teach that as long as the candle is burning, there's always hope. Never despair, no matter what your seemingly insurmountable problem is. Rebbe Nachman of Breslev says that everything could turn itself around completely for the better in the nearest future. Just like the few Maccabees who remained faithful to Hashem and to His Torah, we might be outnumbered by a massive enemy too. But, if we learn from those little flickering Chanuka candles that we'll be lighting at the end of the month, G-d willing, we'll defeat the darkness and be winners too. Jews are used to being the underdogs - we thrive on come-from-behind and against-all-odds victories and watching the tyrants of the world crumble. Do you hear that, Achmedinejad?

The Jewish people are sometimes down, but never out. The tiny flames of Chanuka always lift us out of the dark abyss. Don't despair. Don't ever lose faith....

We can't say good-bye to Thanksgiving weekend just yet, not until we've mentioned some of the possibilities George Will offers... "for feeling at least a bit grateful for 2011."

A new genre of humor was born, the currency crisis joke. A Spaniard, an Italian and a Greek go into a bar. They drink until dawn. Who pays the tab? A German.

A week after Barack Obama cited an Ohio restaurant as a beneficiary of the Chrysler bailout, the restaurant closed.

In Texas, Georgia, Wisconsin, Iowa, Pennsylvania and Maryland, lemonade stands run by scofflaw children were put out of business in a government crackdown against wee people who commit capitalism without getting the requisite bureaucratic permissions.

Manning the ramparts on the wall of separation between church and state, a Seattle teacher required Easter eggs to be called “spring spheres.”

Chicago’s new mayor, Rahm Emanuel, told an interviewer — before bolting from the interview — that he sends his children to private schools because “my children are not an instrument of me being mayor. . . . I’m making this decision as a father.”

When the Wisconsin Education Association Council, having spent liberally defending public-sector union privileges, announced it was laying off 40 percent of its staff, it was denounced by the National Staff Organization, a union for employees of education unions.

Under the Essential Air Service program — yes, essential — the federal government contributed $3,720 to subsidize the cost of flying each passenger between Denver and Ely, Nev.

Sunday, 27 November 2011

When you don't see me blogging here, I am usually reading something and trying to figure out what is important and what is... not so much.

Having finished Patrick Henry [Wouldn't you know it, I read the wrong one], I fell back to the Jabotinsky book, The Story of the Jewish Legion. There I came upon this passage, which seems awfully applicable in our time and place -- not so much in its particulars, but rather in Jabotinsky's generality of a "dangerous combination." Maybe you can help me glean from it the lesson that he left for us. It is part of our inheritance, after all, and I want to understand it.

He wrote:

As a General, Allenby was a good strategist -- at any rate, they say so and I am not qualified to judge. But they found it necessary to make him a statesman as well. and here he showed himself strong only as an "executive" -- only as the executor of the counsel of others, and not as the true moving spirit; a big "motor car" which can be driven by anybody with a little skill and a little luck. This combination is always a dangerous one. A man who, because of his career and outlook, had gained an established reputation for power and a strong will (Allenby's subordinates at G.H.Q. called him the "Bull of Bashan"), deep down in his heart, did not know what to do and must of necessity seek counselors. This is a very dangerous combination: usually only those people who suit themselves to the "Bull of Bashan" legend can influence him for they help him to appear just as terrible as reputation makes out, and always counsel him against "sentimentalism" and "softness." Allenby hardly seemed to be anti-Jewish and was probably not even anti-Zionist -- he was scarcely the type of man to have any theoretical attitudes at all; but simply because of his tendency to heed such counselors, to regret any action which seemed to imply a concession to "idealistic humbug," he created in his staff and in his army a poisoned anti-Semitic atmosphere, the like of which I can not recollect in Czarist Russia or anywhere else.

UPDATE ~ By mistake (yet luckily), I first posted this without a title. I hate figuring out what titles should be - I'm so very bad at it, as you know if you've ever tried to search the BtB archives], but this time I think the exercise helped me to define the lesson. Though I'm still uncertain about the "dangerous combination," it does seem to me now that some of the choices before us lie in the dichotomy of executive vs. "moving spirit"...

Saturday, 26 November 2011

I've always thought it would be best if Congress simply gave both sides what they want: Democrats wants higher taxes, Republicans don't. So instead of singling out a particular group on the basis of numbers (as in "tax the rich"), why not single out the group with the most enthusiasm for the project at hand? Tax the Democrats! It's so simple, so obvious. They'll love it, the Republicans will love it, and everyone goes home with what exactly what they demanded.

Now if the BtB Plan were to run into any resistance (I simply can't imagine it), Charles Krauthammer does offer an alternative strategy which could also be effective. Instead of taxing the Dems, we dare them:

.... It is the Republicans who passed — through the House, the only branch of government they control — a real budget that cut $5.8 trillion of spending over the next 10 years. Obama’s February budget, which would have increased spending, was laughed out of the Senate, voted down 97 to 0. As for the Democratic Senate, it has submitted no budget at all for 2- 1/2 years.

Who, then, is do-nothing? Republicans should happily take on this absurd, and central, Democratic campaign plank. Bring Simpson-Bowles to the House floor and pass the most radical of its three deficit-reduction alternatives.

Dare the Senate Democrats to vote down the grandest of all bargains. Dare Obama to veto his own debt commission. Dare the Democrats to actually do something about debt.